NorthEast Radio Watch 2/24/2025: Radio Loses A Good Guy

In this week’s issue… Remembering Gary Stevens, Pens’ Lange – Public stations team up -NEPM cuts again – More cuts at Corus

By SCOTT FYBUSH

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*Gary Stevens was both a good guy and a Good Guy, the last living member of the DJ team that made NEW YORK‘s WMCA (570) a potent competitor against the bigger signals of top-40 rivals WINS and WABC in the 1960s.

But Stevens, who died last Monday, was so much more than just a disc jockey, living multiple radio lives as an executive and a station broker during a career that spanned more than 60 years.

Born in Buffalo, Stevens first hit the air in 1959 at tiny WWOW in Conneaut, Ohio while he was in college.From there, he was in Miami’s sunshine, working at WAME and WCKR, and then in 1961 he hit it big at WIL in St. Louis, which was then one of the biggest top-40 stations in the midwest.

After two years at WIL and two more at Detroit’s influential WKNR, it was off to WMCA, where he arrived in 1965 to do the crucially important night shift, up against Cousin Brucie on WABC’s massive 50,000-watt signal.

Stevens put up a good fight, though, spending more than three years on WMCA while also taping shows that aired in the UK on offshore pirate “Swinging Radio England.”

That ultimately led him out of the on-air life and into management. In 1968, he left WMCA and relocated to Europe to sell US TV programming to European broadcasters, returning in 1971 to join Doubleday Broadcasting at its KRIZ in Phoenix.

In his 14-year run with Doubleday, Stevens ended up running the company, which brought him back to New York to oversee then-WHN (1050) and WAPP (103.5) – and eventually the sale of the entire group in 1986. That propelled him into yet another new career as one of the industry’s most successful and most admired station brokers, first with Wertheim Schroeder & Co. and then at the helm of his own Connecticut-based firm.

In addition to handling many of the deals that created big clusters as ownership rules were eased, Stevens became an industry leader, serving on the boards of the NAB and the RAB. Late in his career, as a board member at Saga Communications, he stepped in as interim chairman following the 2022 death of Ed Christian.

And yes, he was truly one of radio’s lower-case good guys, always available to even the newest broadcasters to share advice and insight from his long career.

Stevens was 84.